Shopping 101

I have received a request of information from my lovely Nana about the type of food I eat here in Finland. But before I respond to this request, I will tell you the story of my first Finnish shopping experience that I meant to tell you about weeks ago.

When I first arrived in Finland, the day I was going to move into my apartment, my fellow Canadian and I decided to stock our kitchens with all the essentials while we still had access to a car. Our student tutor pointed us in the direction of a grocery store and off we went. first was the produce section. Collecting all the necessary fruits and veggies wasn't too hard because they look the same all over the world. Proud of our collections we went to move on when I had a flashback to my time in South Africa and the then foreign concept of weighing your produce before hand and taking it to the till with a barcode sticker on it. I scanned the produce area and saw some similar looking machines. First crisis averted and embarrassment avoided.

Next we had the navigate the world of Finnish labels. Our Finnish friend from field school had been kind enough to provide us with some basic grocery-related vocabulary, so we new words like maito (milk), voi (butter), juusto (cheese), kala (fish), and some others. This was very helpful when finding things, but less helpful when distinguishing low fat from delicious milk. For this we had to rely on the efficacy of marketing, assuming lighter coloured packaging meant lighter milk (and it worked!!). After about an hour of clumsily collecting everything necessary to stock an empty kitchen, we moved towards the till.

Only one till was open, so we stood in the only available line to wait. Once we had stopped the learning experience that was our shopping trip, we had time to look around. Maybe see what other people were buying and judge a whole countries diet based on that, like I do back home. That was when we realized the error of our ways. the people in line around us had a maximum of 5 items each and there we were. Carts piled high with everything a new kitchen could ever want or desire. Surrounded by people buying chips and beer for a relaxing evening. Then it dawned on us. We were about to buy everything we would need to survive...at a convenience store. We were next in line, making sneaking out and putting some of our stuff back impossible.

It took the woman about 5 minutes to ring all of my stuff in, at which point there was a growing line of 7 people behind me carrying only candy, chips and beer and looking disgruntled at best. To top it all off the cashier didn't speak English and we had no idea how to ask for bags in Finnish. So our groceries were piling up on the conveyor belt behind the till as we tried to mime that we needed bags. Now there are 10 people behind us in line. We had officially become those incompetent foreigners. Eventually we successfully mimed our need for bags, hung our heads in shame and ran from the grocery store. I snuck a glance back as the sliding doors began to close behind us...they had just opened a new till.

What happened in Finland

It’s hard for me to believe I have been in Finland for almost three weeks now. So much for being more regular with my blog updates!

Finland is a very fascinating country. I must say that it feels harder to adjust to than South Africa, but the circumstances that I am here under are very different as well. In South Africa I didn’t know anyone before I arrived, so I had to throw myself into the culture and had only my own observations of cultural differences. Here, I have a friend that came with me in the same program, so I get twice as many observations and a kind of safety blanket in her to avoid loneliness. I think it makes it harder to adjust because it's so easy to go back to familiar Canadian things.

I am learning about the style of doing things and mindset that Finns have despite my attachment to all things Canadian. At times Finland reminds me a bit of Canada in its personality. The underdog lumped in with the surrounding countries from an outside point of view, but proud in the fact that it is an entity in and of itself. However, it is so very different from anywhere I have travelled to before. I really enjoy exploring countries I know nothing about. It makes it much more exciting because you are constantly learning new things and you have no preconceptions about what it is going to be like. The only thing I knew about Finland before coming here was that Santa was from here and that Finns are reputedly quiet people. And I'm not going to lie...there's a little bit more to Finland than just that.

But anyway, enough of my thoughts and feelings, what have I actually done while I’ve been in Finland! Well, I sorted out all the fun stuff, like bank accounts, registering for classes, etc. All of which is a very confusing process in Joensuu and not at all straight forward. You have to talk to an entirely different person in a different building in a different part of town and each task takes a million different steps. I was so thankful to have my student tutor to drive us around and let us know all the little details of what we had to get done. I don’t know how I would have done it without her!

After about a week of organizing my new life, two friends and I went to Koli National Park to go hiking. Koli is a national pride of Finland. It is a beautiful little mountain that you can hike (read: Stairmaster) up and get a gorgeous view of miles and miles of lakes and islands. We had a lot of fun exploring and picking blueberries (mustikka) and lingonberries (puolukka) throughout the park. Then we went mushroom picking. I am terrible at mushroom picking, but I had tons of fun...minus the hirvikärpänen (mooseflies). Hirvikärpänen are the most horrible little devil creatures known to man! They are blood sucking little demons that fly onto you then, drop their wings and burrow into your hair and flesh. They never die, no matter how many times you smack them, and do an amazingly good job of sticking to you despite excessive swatting. And to top it all off they look super creepy. In conclusion, I hate them with every fibre of my being.

I feel like this post is becoming far too long, so I will just quickly say that other than that excitement, I have been attending many less than exciting orientation/introduction classes (though they should all be ending this week and my interesting classes can begin), exploring the town and getting to know my fantastic roommate! Despite the conscious effort to adjust to Finnish life, I really enjoy it here. The people are very friendly and honest about themselves. I may not feel at home just yet, but I do feel welcomed!

No Matter How Late We Stay Up

It’s strange to think that the field school portion of my Masters is already over. Considering how little I’ve slept these last three weeks, they have gone by incredibly quickly. I’m currently in the Frankfurt airport, waiting for my flight to Helsinki, so I’ll do a quick recap of what happened after we left BC.

A lot.





Ok, I’ll elaborate a little. The Alberta crew was great! They welcomed us with open arms and, after laying the ground rules, it was like they’d been with us from day one. You could tell that they’d put a lot of thought into what they wanted us to get out of this portion of the field school and had picked some really knowledgeable guest speakers from which we could learn. Having the coordinator there to supplement everything we were learning, meant that we were able to get a really good idea of forestry in Alberta!

In Alberta, we learned a lot about how to use forestry to imitate natural disturbance when harvesting. Our coordinator having a fire fighting background meant that we learned a lot about this in relation to fire management and prescribed burning. I found it especially interesting because of the time I spent working in Dawson Creek. For the most part we explored the Peace Region of Alberta (a similar area to Dawson Creek) and it was really neat to relate my experience on the other side of the border to how things were done in a similar ecosystem, but a different province.

To finish the Alberta leg of our adventure with a bang, we decided to stay up all night instead of getting some sleep before our 6am flight! I think Edmonton is still recovering from our adventures and I must admit, I think I am as well. But it was all in good fun and there will always be time to sleep later....right?

In New Brunswick, the welcoming committee took a little time to warm up to us. At this point we’d been with only each other for 14 days and it was starting to show. We had about a million inside jokes and must have looked like a motley crew to any outsiders. I like to think that in the end they realized that though we may party hard and joke around a lot, we are responsible adults who are there because we are curious and actually like learning. At least, I hope the message got across!

As different as BC and Alberta were, New Brunswick was in a world of its own! As it was one of the first areas of Canada to be colonized, they are dealing with a lot of private land in their forest management. Another big difference in how the Maritimes work is that they do a lot more value added products. And by a lot more I mean BC and Alberta do none, as compared to New Brunswick doing almost only value added products! This meant that a lot of this leg of the journey was visiting mills and factories and seeing the diversity of products being made, from low grade fencing to paper to high end kitchen cabinetry. Coming from my conservation background, this was a whole new world. I’d never seen all these wood products being made and the questions from me and the whole group were endless. I think we went over time at every stop we made. Our hosts deserve a thousand thanks for their knowledge and patience with us!

The most interesting thing about this field course was learning just how differently everything is done all over Canada. You wouldn’t think one country would have such diversity in resource management strategies, but when you take into consideration the vastly different social and political climates in these areas...it really makes a lot of sense. What one region of a country adopts without a second thought, wouldn’t even be on the radar in another region. Especially in a country as large and politically young as Canada! I also learned that my UBC education was VERY BC-centric and I’m glad I chose to go to a different university (or two) for my Masters.

Aaaaaand Continued...

1858 – The Gold Rush and creation of BC
So now the secret was out and the gold rush began. When the first ship of prospectors arrived in Victoria, it doubled the population of the town. Most of these prospectors were Californians that were reaching the tail end of their own gold rush and were hoping to try their luck further north.

Even before the gold rush had begun in earnest, James Douglas feared that the lawlessness that occurred in California during their gold rush would occur in New Caledonia as well. In 1857, he created a law that required every miner to have a license and imposed a 10% customs duty on imported goods. The fee was low, so that a gold panner could pay it back with a day of work, but it created a controlled access to the area.

The next year, James Douglas really cracked down on policing New Caledonia and imposed a colonial government in the area without permission of the British Crown. Tension was high between the miners and the First Nations, so there was little resistance to the imposed governance from the side of the Europeans. When the British Crown found about Douglas’ rogue governance, they decided to make his authority in the area official by making New Caledonia a British colony. Queen Victoria herself was the one to come up with the name British Columbia for New Caledonia. At the time Americans were colloquially calling their land Columbia, so the moniker British Columbia was a cheeky way of saying they may have lost their American colony, but they had laid claim to this new land. On November 19th, 1885 the proclamation naming British Columbia as a new British colony was read in Fort Langley. However, New Westminster became the capital as it was easier to defend being further from the border and lying on the Fraser River.

As the Gold Fever began to intensify around 1860, a 108 mile wagon road was built from Harrison Lake (Fort Douglas) up to Lillooet by the Royal Engineers and contractors. This road made it easier and cheaper to transport goods and people up the Fraser. Shortly after the construction of the Douglas-Lillooet Wagon Road, the Fraser Canyon gold rush reached its peak in 1861 with 50,000 miners along the Fraser River. These miners were mostly Americans come up from California, with a smaller percentage of European and Chinese immigrants.

At this peak, the British Crown changed British Columbia’s eastern border to go directly North in the Peace River area. This was done in an attempt to keep gold-seekers under the control of the British and more effectively monitor who entered the colony from the North. However, after 1861 gold become more capital intensive as it was buried beneath rock and dirt as you moved further North and the alluvial gold was removed.

The Role of Lillooet

So how does the, now little, town of Lillooet come into this gold rush. At one point Lillooet was the largest town west of Chicago and north of San Fransisco. Lillooet was the furthest north the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush went before gold was found in the Cariboo and sparked the Cariboo gold rush. Not only was Lillooet difficult to get past using the river, it was harder through the mountains to the northeast. When they had built the Cariboo wagon road, the engineers had to blast through rock and create bridges over valleys and rivers.

The Lillooet people were often described as being destitute at the onset of the gold rush and were colloquially known as the “friendly Indians”. They were definitely up for a shock when the gold rush occurred and brought with it a huge influx of people so different from themselves. No one is sure of just how many people were there, but estimates range around 25,000 people arriving in only a few months. In spite of their friendly nature, the Lillooet, like so many First Nations at the time, were pushed back from their waterfront communities. Up to the Main Street area of modern day Lillooet is directly on top of the main village of a former First Nations band.

First Nations and their role

There was a great deal of tension between the First Nations and Europeans during the gold rush and it has continued to this day. Some of the reasons for this animosity on the end of the First Nations came from the rotgut whiskey brought in by the Americans, poor treatment of First Nations women by white men, and miners stealing their caught fish in the river. However, the dependence Europeans had on the First Nations to navigate the wild lands of BC put Europeans in a vulnerable position that they did not seem to appreciate. This one-sided dependence and one-sided exploitation of people and resources caused a great deal of armed conflict during the gold rush. Many people on both sides lost their lives and the tension just increased as a result.

The government went about “Indian law” under the assumption that First Nations would be wiped out by European diseases and thus were doomed to extinction. First Nations in BC, unlike the other parts of Canada, were not allowed even the opportunity to sign treaties and get some immediate compensation for their land and resources. For obvious reasons, this was not pointed out to the First Nations. James Douglas even made the claim that British law was there to protect the rights of the Indians and white men equally.

Tie it back to forestry

The fact that no treaties were signed by the BC First Nations during the time of the gold rush means that they are able to negotiate more easily for the management of their historical lands today. This is especially evident in the growing popularity of community forestry.

Early on James Douglas recognized that gold mining was not a stable basis for an economy as it was too destructive to the environment. The other major natural resources in the area were salmon and trees. Salmon fisheries had already taken off as an industry because you could transport them down the river. Trees were not as easy to sell especially to the American market because of the distance the goods had to travel with no roads and high American tariffs. Furthermore, the raw logs had to be shipped because there were very few sawmills in the area, other than a couple at the mouth of the Fraser that sent their products to the Pacific Rim. So, initially, most of the timber used in BC was shipped from Puget Sound just south of the border.

Forestry really became a viable industry in BC after the creation of the TransCanada Railway. The Railway made it possible to ship the timber around the country and helped to create a bigger market for it. Plus there was a lot of lumber needed in the creation of the railway itself and to create homes for the new people it brought to BC after its construction.

A (less than) Brief History of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush

The industrious logger by a fallen tree and gold panner hunched over a stream are the iconic images of British Columbia. While these may initially appear to be unrelated industries, their histories were inevitably intertwined with the creation and development of BC as a province and a part of Canada.

Let me set the stage, back before the West became so wild. Before any country had laid claim to the land that is now British Columbia, it was mostly under the control of fur trading companies in the area and the First Nations or native people that had originally lived there. One thing that surprised me in my research on this topic was the actual size of the native population at this time. The history books always made it seem as though the population of BC was mostly composed of Europeans. Many First Nations had a lot more control of the area than some might believe solely because their knowledge of the area provided the expertise needed to navigate the dangerous rivers and mountain passes. Fur traders at the time were very dependent on the native people to get around.

The biggest player in the fur trade at the time was the London-based Hudson Bay Company. The HBC was kind of the eyes and ears on the ground for the British Empire at the time; Canada was a little too far away and spread out for Britain to bother sending resources to claim and defend it. Most of the British investment at the time was put into hot countries, such as India, South Africa, and Australia, which were thought to be more valuable (spices versus fur hats). Therefore, the men involved with the Hudson Bay Company tended to be the same people the British put into positions of power once BC had become a colony.

The biggest threat to the stability of the HBC in New Caledonia (now BC’s mainland west of the Rockies) was from American “mountain men” coming in to trap beaver and other animals for their pelts as well. In an effort to deter Americans from moving further North, the HBC trapped all the beavers in the Snake River Valley so if they did move north, they would only find a wasteland devoid of the animals for which they were looking.

In 1849, the Hudson Bay Company moved its headquarters from Fort Vancouver to the more convenient location of Fort Victoria and Vancouver Island became a British colony with Victoria as its capital. As I mentioned before the leading members of the HBC were often put in positions of power by the British government and this case was no different. The senior HBC officer James Douglas was appointed governor of Vancouver Island and was put in charge of the British subjects in New Caledonia.

The joint roles he performed created a conflict of interest as he was affiliated with the largest company in the area and the government meant to control resources and manage the land. In fact, James Douglas and the HBC knew about gold in BC long before it was made known to the British government or the public. The First Nations had known about gold in their rivers and its value to the Europeans, but bands like the Haida in Haida Gwaii (then Queen Charlotte Islands) did their best to keep this fact hidden from the Europeans. The Haida people tried to prevent the HBC from exploring their islands, but they didn’t have any luck if they wanted to continue trade with the HBC. In 1857, the HBC slipped up. James Douglas sent a shipment of gold he collected from the First Nations down to San Francisco and the word spread that the HBC was trading gold with the First Nations in BC.

Robots in Disguise

As you've probably guessed by my lack of a conscious effort, I've been super busy with school. Our schedule is packed with all kinds of lectures, hikes and "cultural experiences". We're in Alberta now, so I'm going to try and go through the BC highlights in this post, so I don't get too far behind.

When I left you off last we were in Lillooet. From there we headed further north to UBC's Alex Fraser Research Forest at Gavin Lake. What a beautiful facility! It’s a shame I didn’t get to use it in my undergrad, but, as they say, better late than never. There were canoes to take out on the lake, a three foot high ramp for jumping a bike into the lake, the resident fiddle band and a sauna. Everything was so much fun and it was hard to believe we're actually receiving credits for this! The first night we all alternated relaxing in the sauna and jumping into the lake. We even partook in the Finnish practice of beating yourself on the back with aspen branches. As ridiculous as it sounds, it does feel like a strange kind of massage and was welcome after all the day's driving.

The next day we went around the research forest and learned about their shelterwood harvesting research. The idea of shelterwood is to harvest the large trees in a stand and leave all the little natural regeneration in the understory, so that you a) don't have to plant as much, b) the trees already have a headstart at growing , and c) it doesn't look like a clearcut...'cause it's not. It's a really neat idea (not that it's a very new one) and I've never seen a logging operation that looked as beautiful as this one. See below :-)



That evening we had a bonfire and decided to fire up the sauna (pun intended). The night ended on an exciting note when the enthusiasm of the group to create the perfect sauna caused the overheating of the wooden roof. The teamwork we’ve developed over the last week really showed as we all rushed to put out the fire together. I didn't realize fire fighting would be part of the course material, but it's something I've always wanted to try!

The next day was a lot of driving interspersed with a trip to visit the West Fraser sawmill in William's Lake. Then it was time to say bye to BC and get handed over to the Albertans. A horrible fate some might think, but it was assuaged by the surplus of funds providing us with a white water rafting trip down the Fraser River up near Mount Robson. We had a blast and the guide was so impressed when he had to call as back out of the 7 degree river for our end-of-the-trip swim in the Fraser. That's what happens when you travel with a bunch of Scandanavians!

A Conscious Effort

I am going to try to write in my blog more religiously (though I've said this before) while I am at field school. I need to write a blog of what we do each day anyway, so that should be a good incentive to just continue the writing.

Today I had to do a lecture on the BC gold rush, particularily how it relates to the town of Lillooet where we're staying. We ran out of time during the day due to excessive enjoyment of our Joffre Lakes hike just outside of Pemberton, so I had the privledge of doing my lecture in the pub. Each of the students from BC was asked to do a presentation on something related to forestry in BC and I chose the gold rush, aka the least forestry related topic. It was unfortunate that my first choice BC parks was already taken, but I did learn a lot from my topic being the gold rush. It's amazing what they don't teach you in school.

It was an extremely effective way to have to do a lecture. It was more of a conversation or "story time". I told the history of BC and they played a drinking game where they had to drink every time I said "gold". Making the lecture all the more fun and my lapses in memory all the less memorable! I will hopefully post a blog with all I learned about BC during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. It is a remarkable story that I am surprised I never learned in school. Much more interesting than incessant babble about the Hudson Bay Company and lacross!

In any case, I think the lecture was a success (at least in everyone's intoxicated state) and I was able to finish of the night with a Finnish (pun intended) lesson. Again, I would like to post the Finnish that I've learnt so far and to thank our resident Finn for all his assisstance in my education. He has been more than patient and deserves all the beer I plan on giving him!